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Tipsy Monday

Markets, which have been stuck in neutral for some number of weeks now, may actually end this week with a clear signal as to how the financial future will work out.

Our two “biggies” on the calendar at the release of Retail Sales figures tomorrow and Consumer Prices on Thursday.

From the long wave economics standpoint, neither is so important as the overshadowing long term bond picture (still in decline, and still in channel) but if the consumer is still spending (tomorrow’s report) then optimism will rock the street. On the other hand, a simple moment of sobriety will suggest that not everyone in America can buy a new car every month, so at some point, the auto industry will slide into another cyclical decline.

And that gets us to the consumer price problem, which will tell us how much “pricing power” is left now that everyone has been shaken out by both the Obamacare program as well at income taxes. Taken as a whole, we should be getting some hints in April/May data.

Around here, we’re already thinking that auto sales will be leveling or dropping, simply because about everyone has one (or three) cars in their households, already. And as if payments won’t grab you by the short-hairs, the insurance companies will. And then there’s the matter of putting gas or diesel in them.

As of this morning, the Triple A Fuel Gauge Report was showing regular up 1.37% compared with year ago levels. The “deeper pocket drivers” feeding Premium to their cars were paying 2.6% more.

Some people believe that premium gas will get slightly better mileage, and is therefore worth the additional 35.4-cents per gallon, but CarTalk has done a bit of myth-busting over here which may be disappointing if you’ve been paying a $5-10 buck per load premium for…er…premium, as it were. (Our first tip.)

The price of oil is still hovering right around $100, so there’s no reason for gasoline to go up dramatically, except for the mumbo-jumbo about summer driving season, which really comes down to higher prices because they can.

On Consumer Prices (inflation) that looks to be tame, too. That’s because despite the hype festival of two weeks ago (288,000 jobs created!!! Remember?) there were really 73,000 fewer people actually working.

It doesn’t take advanced degrees in bullshit to figure out that with wages stuck, number of people working actually down, that we’re not likely to have runaway prices until some kind of shortage shows up. And we won’t worry about them until the food picture clarifies as a result of all this climate change going on, lol.

As one commentator noted last night: If “climate change” was real, where are the record hurricane and tornado seasons? Where’s the record heat? Hasn’t been around for a long timer…but it’s all part of a government plan to roll out of carbon tax because…again, with a nod to my friend Bruce, the expat in Ecuador who’s there mostly as a matter of principle, “It’s because they like to.”

It’s all part of the merger of corporations and government which results in a singularly undeniable fact: People are being rolled from owning their lives to “renting them.”

Still, absent a global coastal whatever, and absent record heat and cold, no hurricanes or tornados and skeptical weathermen by the boatload, we need to make sure we have plenty of external enemies so you will submit to taxation at absurd levels.

So whether it’s terrorists and the security state hiring, on the one hand, or the increasing policing and administering versus the unemployed on the other, it’s all one coin: The Big Duality to hoax us into bending over…or at least getting out of bed on Monday, but you already know this, I’m sure.

Russian to Monday

Still, the rant is not complete without noticing that the pro-Russian dudes were out in force voting this weekend not to remain with the coup government in Kiev. They want their own path, and (predictably) the Russians today are sounding somewhat sympathetic to their cause.

The astute observer sees the Great Duality at work again here: Western-friendly media outlets (like the BBC) are headlining “Ukraine Crisis: Self-rule referendum ‘a farce’” but they quote the people who came to power in Kiev with no votes at all..just guns and gangs. OH, and aid from our State Department.

Once again, the Aware Observer mutters as the spectre of the whole human race being held hostage by mad governments, equipped with nuclear, chemical, biological, genetic, and scalar weapons enough to end human life many times over and remembers from Iron Mountain that peace is not a profitable endeavor.

And so we’re here at another Crooked Monday decision: do we get up and put on the yoke (or direct deposit) of oppression, and give up for another week the dreams and ideals of a more inventive world where the pursuit of human excellence in the arts and crafts isn’t subservient to nuclear blackmail?

The EU is holding meetings today on how to punish Russia. But, in fact, privately I’m sure the Industrialist class is smiling. The game is on, people are afraid, however rightly so, because from fear comes revenue. Order, control, compliance, conformance, ease of managing 7-billion people.

Why of course. But the terrible charade is precisely why people don’t like getting out of bed on Tipsy Monday: The deck really is stacked and the correlation between “doing good” and “making money” is more and more tenuous – hell coincidental – by the day.

Good luck with that.

The fact is, it’s like Zeus the Cat tells me when we’re in morning meal negotiations and I’ve asked him about his patrols for vermin around the property overnight: “I only do it for the food, you fat frigging miserable exploitive pig of a human. If I wasn’t hungry, I’d show you….”

“And that attitude Zeus, is why people call your kind “pussies.”

It all rolls down hill. There’s a lesson there, perhaps.

More after this.

Climate Change

Speaking of charades, and while we don’t have the fear-mongering of record tornados this year, or record hurricanes, at least we have other dire impacts of “global warming to hype.”

Not to fear! I have a secret plan to save the region: Send in Al Gore to melt in all. With more of the global warming hot air whipping the flag and carbon tax schemes. It’ll melt your heart, if not your glaciers.

This is one of those ‘grand alignments’ in politics where the Constitution-defending ACLU and moderate republicans to Tea Party types are on the same side of an issue.

I’m sure the Opologists will have an excuse for selectively enforcing the laws they feel like – they’ve got a fine track record going there on numerous fronts, including the Mexican front. Secure borders, but not if there are potential straight ticket voters…